For all Eternity
by jaarli
Summary: How difficult can it be to keep a promise?
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters appearing in this story nor am I making profit out of this. This story is written entirely for fun.

Author's notice: I would like to thank my wonderful beta, Freya. First of all, for showing interest in my story. Secondly, for betaing it. And finally, for doing a wonderful job.

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It was the fourth night in a row that sleep had eluded Jansen. He had tried laying on his stomach, his back and both sides but the dreamworld hadn't opened its gates. He knew that he would fall asleep eventually but only catch a few good hours before waking up to his kingly duties again. Not that he minded his duties, of course. After he married Ming his life had taken a turn for better. No more did he stay in a bar until the lights went out and find himself with three ladies of the night. Had he been told of this 'change' the morning he joined Kaim and Seth on their quest he would've denied the possibility of it ever happening. But now...now the sound of Ming's soft breathing beside him was enough.

He lay back on the bed knowing that his mind, no matter how he tried to close his eyes and drift off, would not allow him rest. Yesterday there had been worry in Ming's eyes when he finally crawled out of the bed. She had noticed his tired, somewhat glassy gaze and the bags that were slowly but steadily forming under his eyes. She said no more of it but kept on giving him glances laced with worry throughout the day, and Jansen half-wondered if she was planning on giving him a sleeping draught or simply use her magic. But she hadn't. She had drifted off to sleep as if nothing in the world was wrong - no worries, no fears.

Jansen hadn't had either of them a week ago. And then, just some nights ago, he had found out he was going to be a dad. She had told him like it was the most normal thing to happen...perhaps it was; even he thought so in the beginning. The first of the four nights there had been only one word going through his mind: Wow. It was the word that kept him up all night and when Ming woke she found him still staring at the ceiling. The second night was worse - Jansen began picturing himself as a dad. Cooke and Mack were his closest experiences to being around children and, truth be told, he hadn't done that well. Near the end of their quest for Gongora he had even stopped counting the number of kicks Cooke'd given him. And Mack...was Mack. Gohtza came to mind next - Jansen remembered his part in Sarah and Kaim's grandchildren stealing a train and going to look for their mother, and how it had lead up to the frozen train tracks and the children nearly freezing to death. And he had had a hand in all of it.

The third night brought the worries - was he good enough a person to be a dad? There were times when he lost his self-control and said things he didn't mean - or didn't think he meant. The kid would learn to swear before it learned to walk. What kind of an example would he be to his own kid? Would the kid sometime in his or her adulthood tell him they'd been better off without a dad? Jansen himself had never known his own dad and his mom had told him only a thing or two about the mystery man. He was supposedly brave, handsome and all the like. Why he had left her, Jansen's mom never shared. He didn't even know if his dad was still alive.

This night it was worse - it was time for the fears. Even when he married Ming, Jansen knew she was going to outlive him. She was going to watch him grow old, get sick and die. It was easy now, three years into their marriage, for her to say that she would not mind but what about when he was fifty...or sixty? What about when his hair faded in colour and he got those old-man's eyebrows? Would he be an ugly old man? Was there any other kind of old man? What about the kid? Jansen wasn't going to be there to see it waste away, to see the light of its eyes slowly fade until nothing but a dim spark remained. He couldn't understand how Ming was able to do it. He had seen how losing a child could break a woman. It had robbed Sarah of her memory, leaving her wallowing in guilt. And Kaim...it hadn't served him any better. The first time Jansen wasn't around to witness the pain of the loss, but he was there for the second time. And somehow, even though he should've felt he was intruding, he didn't. If anything, he felt an affinity.

It was all of these thoughts that kept him awake now, even though he should've been sleeping blissfully for quite a few hours already. Jansen was sure that no one else in Numara was still awake - apart from those weird dock worker guys who had, for some strange reason, chosen a night job. And the thieves that searched for an easy mark. Or maybe even they had gone to bed already. He corrected himself - anyone who had the choice of sleeping through the night was probably asleep by now. And he, the King of Numara, lay there thinking of things he knew would eventually drown him in a well of guilt.


	2. Early Morning Sun

Authors notice: I don't know if anyone's going to read this anymore but I've decided to finish it. During the last couple of years I've had so many new ideas for this story that I finally need to write them down. I could say I'm sorry for the immense delay but sorry doesn't quite cut it, I believe. But here you go anyway.

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Her gaze rested on the form of her sleeping husband as the morning sun greeted her on the balcony. Ming had woken up early, as was her habit, to prepare for the daily routines of a queen. Jansen, on the other hand, spent every minute possible in the land of slumber, sprawled on their bed as if the matress was going to run away if he did not hold on tight to it. She did not mind - there was a special sort of solace she found in his sleeping form. There had been too much worry in his eyes off late, worry for her and their unborn child. As he slept, so did the thoughts that troubled him.

In his sleep he was beautiful, a mess of dark tresses of hair and spots of silky skin, dark eyelashes fluttering every now and then.

She had lived long enough to know the eventual fate of humans - to grow old, in both body and mind, and eventually fall to eternal sleep. This worried him, she knew it. Not the fact that she knew it, but that it would happen to him and she would have to witness it. She could not claim it did not sadden her. She could not look him in the eye and say she never thought of it.

She did, but just because he did too.

Ming had ruled Numara over a millenia and during that time she had seen youths lose their hair as age took them, eyes lose their sharpness and minds their memories. She was familiar with the effects of time. She had prepared herself for it before she accepted his proposal. The knowledge made her sad, at times, but rather than dwell on what she would one day lose, she kept her mind on what she gained.

And that was why her eyes rested on his sleeping form. All the years with him would be worth it, the memories would carry her on after his passing.

One could not rule a kingdom if one was constantly worried about loss.

In the world of mortals one of infinite life was at disadvantage - the choices were few: love while you can or spend your years in solitude. Kaim and Sarah were the lucky ones, they did not have to make this choice. Before Jansen came along Ming thought herself lucky as well: her status as the thousand year old queen was one of solitude. It had been easy to wall herself away from others emotionally, to make her status the insurmountable chasm between herself and everyone else. To keep herself from the pain, she had rationalized.

Until he stumbled in on her playing the harp.

Jansen had had her fascinated from the start and soon she had noticed there was no choice. It was something he did not understand.

She knew fully well he was going to die. But at the moment, this very minute, he was alive. He was there to hold, to kiss, to touch - one could not love loneliness. No matter what she told herself she knew that that was what her solitude had been. Loneliness.

Her fingers slid slowly down to her slightly swollen belly. Jansen was wrong about her regretting their marriage one day, the day the first grays made it into his hair and wrinkles onto his face. She had lived in Numara almost all of her life on this world and knew nothing about the one she came from. She had lived here, in this palace, as long as she could remember. But only after he came along it felt like home.

She knew she would never be alone again.


	3. Missives

Jansen sighed as he read through the missives in his hand. In the last few weeks Numara had taken a turn for the worse. It had started slow, the cases were few and far apart. At first the apothecaries had ruled it as a simple cold. The symptoms were all there: a running nose, sore throat and slight headache with a hint of fever, thought to be over in a few days. They were proven wrong. The disease had mingled as if it had a mind of its own, waited for the opportune moment.

He mentally scolded himself - of course it couldn't have a will, it was just a disease amongst so many others. But unlike its competitors, it proved to be deadly and exscruciating.

It had been too late by then anyway - those sick with the 'cold' soon found walking and even moving tremendously painful, the clean patches of their skin sprouted boils and the slime they coughed up before turned crimson in colour. It was not this, though, that took their lives. Whatever they managed to drink never stayed down for long, food followed suit. Wracked with pain, growing weaker by the day, the sick ones simply faded away - meat could not hold on to their bones, their sight lost their spark, their skin its glow. In the end there was nothing else left but a few ragged breaths and finally even the lungs gave out, ridden with slime and blood.

It was a race with time that could not be won, a race with shackles on your ankles and your hands tied behind your back.

Jansen read the topmost missive again - ones similar to it had arrived daily for over two weeks now. He and Ming were both aware of the current state of the city, of the lives lost each day to this mysterious plague. But that wasn't what the missives were about - they told the stories of the families of the politically important people of Numara. Of those whose word had a weight.

Like the chief apothecary the missive in his hand was about. Written in short, crude sentences it told soullesly how his daughter had succumbed to the disease, following her mother who had passed away a week before.

_'Jansen...Jansen, you decided to become chivalrous and gallant on the worst possible moment', _he berated himself.

It did not take a very wise man to see how the news about the plague, as the disease had been named, affected Ming. Her years as the ruler of Numara had toughened her, the numerous pieces of news about deaths, thefts and murders shown her the shadowy side of life - her reactions to the recent news could go unnoticed to the untrained eye but he knew better. There was a slight twitch in her left eyebrow, a small frown on her lips - both gone in a matter of seconds and only there to notice if one knew what to look for.

Jansen knew. He was the reason to most of those frowns and twitches. But at least in those cases he could do something about it, promise her he'd strive to be more kingly, make it in time to highly important political meetings and actually bring his brain with him.

What could he say in his defense? It wasn't his fault she dressed like that.

But this...

He glanced at Ming who stood on their bedroom balcony, her hand on her swollen belly, lost in thought as she viewed the city of Numara. He had no trouble in understanding where her thoughts were at as her eyes slowly scanned the streets below. She couldn't get the disease herself, her immortality making her immune, but Jansen knew she felt the pain and desperation of her people as their spouses and children perished, their relatives met their end in the inhuman manner the plague offered. And she feared - not for herself but their unborn child: would it be born into a plague-ridden city, never knowing the beauty it could hold? And him...she was worried about him. After all, he was a mortal, in danger of contracting the disease himself.

There was nothing he could do about the twitches and frowns this caused but give her empty promises that he would not get sick. He recognised the words as lies as they fell from his lips, as did she, but they seemed to calm her down, if only for a moment. There was no piece of mind he could offer her. Nothing but pull her into his arms and hope she found comfort in the embrace.

And not think it might be the last one.

His thoughts wondered to his mother as his fingers ran once more over the smooth paper. Ms Friedh, as his mother wanted to be called, did not live within the city borders, even though he had frequently offered her a residence in Numara. He had often wondered whether this was because she liked her little house in the countryside better than one in a city or if she truly disliked Ming as much as it seemed. Whenever the two met, his mother would do her best not to look at Ming or show any kind of kindness toward her. The only people she seemed to hold in less regard than his wife were Kaim and Sarah. They had met only once but she had done her best not to catch their eye.

His mother, Apollonia, had never been married. Jansen remembered vaguely asking as a child if it was because of her name. All he had received as an answer was a look he didn't know the meaning of. It was just one of the questions that remained unanswered - just like the one about his father. There had been multiple candidates during his childhood but somehow he knew that none of them were the real thing. She had only told Jansen that he had been a soldier of sorts, a mercenary for hire. Tragic events had driven them apart and she had never seen him since.

She always told him he had inherited his father's looks. She was right, hardly anyone recognized them as mother and son unless they heard their shared surname.

He pocketed the missive in his hand, wondering if a similar one was to be sent to his mother if he were to catch the disease and perish, and walked over to Ming to give the bad news.


End file.
